Azerbaijani

Azerbaijani (Азәрбајҹан дили, آذربایجان دیلی), also known as Azeri, is a member of the Turkic branch of the Altaic language family. Turkic-speaking peoples first appeared in the area that is today’s Azerbaijan in the 7th century AD. The region became Turkic-speaking in the 11th century when it was invaded by the Turks. It was invaded by Mongols in the 13th century, but the invasion was short-lived. In the early 1800s, Azerbaijan was divided between Persia and Russia. Russia took control of the northern, while Persia took over the southern region of the country.

After the partition, literature and the arts flourished in the Russian part of Azerbaijan. In the first years of the Soviet rule, communist authorities promoted the use of Azerbaijani, and in 1923 made it the official language of education. However, after World War II, the Soviet government began to wage a campaign again the growing Islamic influence in the Caucasus and stopped promoting the use of Azerbaijani.

StatusThere are two varieties of Azerbaijani. Northern Azerbaijani is spoken in the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Southern Azerbaijani is spoken in Iran.

Also spoken in Azerbaijan, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, United States.

Azerbaijan
Northern Azerbaijani is the official language of Azerbaijan. It is used at all levels of education, in the media, in business, and in government. Azerbaijani is the main language of instruction with most school children being taught in Azerbaijani. The rest are taught in Russian or in Armenian. At more advanced levels of education, technical subjects are often taught only in Russian. Newspapers and magazines have been published in Azerbaijani since the mid-19th century. Radio Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, broadcasts in Azerbaijani, as well as Russian, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and Baku Television broadcasts in Azerbaijani and Russian.

Iran
Southern Azerbaijani is widely used as a lingua franca in Iran, although it has no official status. Literacy rates are low. Speakers of Southern Azerbaijani use it at home and in their own communities, but are taught to read and write in Persian or Kurdish.

Dialects

There are significant differences between the Northern Azerbaijani of the former USSR and Southern Azerbaijani of Iran and Turkey in phonology, grammar, and vocabulary. Each of these two major varieties of Azerbaijani has a number of sub-dialects.

Structure

The sound system of Northern Azerbaijani is briefly described below. It is typical of all Turkic languages.

Vowels

Northern Azerbaijani has nine vowel phonemes, i.e., sounds that make a difference in word meaning. There is a contrast between unrounded and roundedfront vowels. Rounded vowels are produced with rounded protruding lips.

As all other Turkic languages, Azerbaijani is characterized by vowel harmony, a type of phonological process that restricts which vowels may be found near each other. Vowels in Azerbaijani words must be in harmony with one another in terms of front versus back, and rounded versus unrounded. For example, if the first vowel in a word is a frontrounded vowel such as /y/ or /ø/, then all other vowels in that word must also be /y/ or /ø/ since these are the only two frontrounded vowels in Azerbaijani.

Consonants
Northern Azerbaijani has 24 consonant phonemes. There are no consonant clusters at the beginning of words. Stops, fricatives, and affricates are devoiced in final position, e.g., kitap ‘book’ (in the nominative case), kitabi ‘book’ (in the accusative case).

Like all Turkic languages, Azerbaijani is agglutinative, i.e., grammatical relations are indicated by the addition of suffixes to stems. There are no prefixes. There is a one-to-one relationship between suffixes and their meanings, so that suffixes are strung together one after another, sometimes resulting in long words, e.g., davranmalıdırlar ‘brotherhood.’ There are various rules for the ordering of suffixes. Azerbaijani uses postpositions to signal grammatical relationships.

Word order
Word order in Azerbaijani sentences is normally Subject-Object -Verb. However, other orders are possible, depending on discourse-oriented considerations such as emphasis.

Vocabulary

Azerbaijani lexicon is basically Turkic. Like other Islamic languages, it has been strongly influenced by Arabic. in addition to Arabic. Northern Azerbaijani has a number of borrowings from Russian. Most recently, there has been a campaign in the Republic of Azerbaijan to purge the language of Russian loanwords. South Azerbaijani speakers in Iran are often bilingual, with the result that their language is also strongly influenced by Persian,

Writing

Azerbaijani has a rich literary tradition. The earliest literature in the language dates back to the 16th century. The first newspaper in the language was published in 1875. Newspapers and magazines have been published in the language ever since the middle of the 19th century. Azerbaijani was and continues to be written in several different scripts.

Northern Azerbaijan

Before 1929, Azerbaijani was written with the Arabic alphabet.

Between 1929–1938, it was written in a version of the Roman alphabet.

Between 1838-1991, it was written with the Cyrillic alphabet.

The Roman script was used from 1922 to 1939.

The Cyrillic alphabet was introduced in 1939, and was amended over the next twenty years. This alphabet contains six non-Cyrillic characters to represent sounds specific to Azerbaijani.

In 1991 and 1992 two versions of the Roman alphabet were reintroduced. They contain additional letters to represent Azerbaijani sounds (Ç, Ğ, I, İ,Ö, Ş, and Ü). The implementation of the Latin-based alphabet has been rather slow, and most Azerbaijanis continue to use the Cyrillic alphabet.

Southern Azerbaijani

Azerbaijani speakers in Iran have always used the Arabic alphabet, although spelling and orthography have not been standardized.

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